Publishers Weekly

Bookstore sales inched up 0.5% in November over a year ago, to $668 million, compared to $665 million in November 2021. For the first 11 months of 2022, sales rose 6.8% over 2021, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Amazon has reportedly laid off a large number of staff at Comixology, the digital comics platform it acquired in 2014. The layoffs are part of Amazon’s companywide effort to reduce costs. Marc Visnick has been promoted to publisher and chief operating officer of manga and graphic novel publisher Tokyopop. He will report to founder and CEO Stu Levy. Leigh Newman has joined Oprah Daily as books director, overseeing Oprah’s Book Club and all book-related content for the Oprah Daily website and O Quarterly, including reviews, excerpts, and essays. Call for Information Feature: Cookbooks Deadline: Feb.…

The Week Ahead At last week’s Digital Book World conference, IPA president Karine Pansa urged those in attendance to make more books more accessible to more people. Senior writer Andrew Albanese reports. publishersweekly.com/dbw-ipa More to Come Reviews editor Meg Lemke speaks with the cohosts about launching PW’s first-ever standalone comics and graphic novels announcements feature. publishersweekly.com/comicsfeature Children’s Bookshelf Newbery Medalist Meg Medina has been named the eighth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. publishersweekly.com/medina…

Last week, Digital Book World held its first in-person show since 2019, and its first in New York City since 2017. The event attracted more than 400 attendees and 18 exhibitors for three days of panels and presentations at the Sheraton Hotel in Times Square. “Digital Book World has always been about evolution—an exploration of the frontiers of the business of storytelling,” said conference organizer Bradley Metrock. “With the way we construct the program, we include not only the necessary technological frontiers involved but the equally important cultural and societal ones as well.” Presentations focused on a variety of themes, including the impact of emerging AI technologies on book and audiobook production, blockchain’s utility for book marketing and retailing, racism in publishing, direct-to-consumer opportunities, the challenges for journalists publishing on Substack, and…

Despite huge first week of sales of Prince Harry’s Spare, units sales of print books rose only 1.4% in the week ended Jan. 14, 2023, over the comparable week in 2022, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Prince Harry’s memoir sold nearly 630,000 print copies in its first week, but that wasn’t enough to keep unit sales in the adult nonfiction category from falling 0.9% from a year ago. Other new titles among the top 10 in adult nonfiction were One by Jamie Oliver, which sold more than 20,000 copies, and The Good Life by Robert Waldinger, which sold more than 16,000 copies. Last year at this time, Baby Step Millionaires by Dave Ramsey was #1 in the category, selling more than 65,000 copies. Unit sales of adult fiction…

Publishing industry veteran Charles Kim has teamed up with digital marketing executive Stephanie Lim to launch Third State Books, a house focused exclusively on Asian American and Pacific Islander voices and stories. Third State is based in San Francisco, and its first title will be Not Your Model Minority by Dion Lim, the Emmy-winning San Francisco–based news anchor known for her reporting on violence against Asian Americans. The book will explore the resilience and togetherness of the AAPI community in response to anti-Asian hate and violence; it’s due out in early 2024. Other titles on the first list include The Slacktivists’ Guide to the World by the Slacktivists, a South Asian American brother-and-sister team focused on Gen-Z news; Big Emotions, a children’s book series by Jenny Wang, a prominent AAPI mental…

In a bid to make prestigious artists’ residencies accessible to Indigenous talent, MacDowell and the Santa Fe, N.Mex.–based Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) have announced a fellowship for graduates of the IAIA’s low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFACW) Program. MacDowell was founded in 1907 and is the nation’s longest-running artist residency. With the new initiative, it seeks “artists we have historically struggled to reach,” said executive director Philip Himberg in a press release, adding that the fellowship represents “a tangible example of how we can and should act to support a diversity of voices that will enrich our culture.” At present, MacDowell and IAIA’s partnership will fund one fellowship for an IAIA graduate annually. “The number of applicants is not limited,” said MacDowell admissions director Courtney Bethel,…